HomeNewsCivil Rights Leader Who Desegregated U. of Georgia on Student-Led Movements of 1960s and Today

Civil Rights Leader Who Desegregated U. of Georgia on Student-Led Movements of 1960s and Today

As a student-led movement for gun control sweeps the country, we look back at a key moment in another historic student movement: desegregation. On January 9, 1961, African-American students Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes walked onto the campus of the University of Georgia to register for classes, as a howling mob of white students screamed racial epithets at them. It was a pivotal moment in the African-American student-led movement to desegregate America’s public high schools and universities. Charlayne Hunter graduated in 1963 and went on to have an award-winning career in journalism, working for PBS, NPR and CNN. For more, we speak with Charlayne Hunter-Gault, award-winning journalist and author of numerous books, including “In My Place,” a memoir of her childhood and her years at the University of Georgia. Her recent piece for The New Yorker is headlined “Surviving School Desegregation, and Finding Hope in #NeverAgain.”